Iran, Not Saudi Arabia, Is to Blame for Yemen's Humanitarian Crisis

Now, with the humanitarian crisis reaching a critical juncture with an estimated 80% of Yemen's 24 million population in need of assistance, aid organisations are finally waking up to the central role the Iranian-backed Houthis have played in creating the disaster.

As humanitarian officials prepare to meet in Brussels this week -- Thursday -- to discuss the Yemeni aid crisis, the main topic of discussion will be what has been described as the unprecedented and unacceptable obstruction tactics being employed by the Houthis that are preventing vital aid supplies from reaching the country's starving population.

In their latest bid to seize control of the aid distribution, the Houthis have recently imposed a 2 percent levy on all the international aid agencies operating in the country, prompting one aid worker to claim that the Houthis could be using the aid money to finance the war.

Whatever the outcome, no one will be in any doubt that it is the Iranian-backed Houthis, and not the Saudi-led coalition, who are primarily responsible for creating Yemen's disastrous humanitarian crisis.

As Yemen's humanitarian crisis reaches a critical juncture, with an estimated 80% of the country's 24 million people in need of assistance, aid organisations are finally waking up to the central role the Iranian-backed Houthis have played in creating the disaster. Pictured: Displaced persons fill water containers at a makeshift camp in a village in Hajjah province, Yemen, on May 9, 2019. (Photo by Essa Ahmed/AFP via Getty Images)

In the five years since Yemen was plunged into its bitter civil war, it has invariably been the Saudi-led coalition, which enjoys the support of the US, Britain and France, that has been blamed for causing what is widely regarded as the world's greatest humanitarian disaster.

Throughout the conflict the main focus of coverage in most of the Western media has been on the role played by the Saudi military in intensifying the conflict, with Riyadh taking the lion's share of the blame for the estimated 100,000 Yemenis that have died.

The Saudis, it is true, have not always covered themselves in glory in the way they have conducted the military campaign, with frequent reports of Saudi warplanes attacking civilian targets.

The Saudis, though, are not the only outside power that has involved itself in the Yemeni conflict. The Houthi rebels, who provoked the civil war in the first place by overthrowing the country's democratically elected president, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, in 2014, have received backing from Iran, with the Revolutionary Guards regularly supplying the Houthis with weapons, including long-range missiles.

The Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, moreover, have been instrumental in escalating the conflict. Not only has the steady flow of weapons smuggled in from Tehran enabled the Houthis to sustain their offensive against the Saudi-led coalition. It has also enabled the Houthis to expand the conflict well beyond Yemen's borders by using Iranian-made missiles to launch a series of attacks against neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

Now, as the humanitarian crisis reaches a critical juncture, with an estimated 80% of Yemen's 24 million population in need of assistance, aid organisations are finally waking up to the central role the Iranian-backed Houthis have played in creating the disaster.

As humanitarian officials prepare to meet in Brussels this week -- Thursday -- to discuss the Yemeni aid crisis, the main topic of discussion will be what has been described as the unprecedented and unacceptable obstruction tactics being employed by the Houthis that are preventing vital aid supplies from reaching the country's starving population.

In what aid officials have described as "an extremely hostile environment", the Houthis have been accused of harassment and obstruction as they seek to prevent humanitarian supplies from reaching the 6.7 million Yemenis who are said to be on the brink of starvation.

In their latest bid to seize control of the aid distribution, the Houthis have recently imposed a 2 percent levy on all the international aid agencies operating in the country, prompting one aid worker to claim that the Houthis could be using the aid money to finance the war.

Washington has responded by threatening to suspend much of its humanitarian assistance to Yemen on March 1 if the Houthis continue to insist on their aid levy.

Such a move, if implemented, would add considerably to the already dire conditions affecting large swathes of the country. It would also, however, highlight the challenge of managing aid operations in areas controlled by an Iranian-backed rebel movement that is openly hostile to the West.

"We're in an unfortunate situation and we're trying to work the problem," said a senior official at the US State Department. "If such an action were taken, it would be one that was forced by basically unprecedented Houthi obstructionism."

A final decision will only be taken following a crunch meeting of aid agencies and donors this week in Brussels, where the thorny topic of how to respond to the Houthis' tactics will be discussed, as well as the implications of suspending aid to a country that is already teetering on the brink of total collapse.

Whatever the outcome, no one will be in any doubt that it is the Iranian-backed Houthis, and not the Saudi-led coalition, who are primarily responsible for creating Yemen's disastrous humanitarian crisis.

Con Coughlin is the Telegraph's Defence and Foreign Affairs Editor and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

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6 Reader Comments

El Toro • Feb 13, 2020 at 23:39

Iran is the heart of Shia Islam and as long as Sunni nations like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia mistreat their Shia citizens, throughout the world, the Iranians will have moral and material support. That is the necessary understanding that must be accepted first before Yemen ever stops fighting.

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Paul Klee • Feb 13, 2020 at 20:58

The US response to the world's greatest humanitarian crisis is to offer the Palestinian Authority $50 billion to refrain from threatening Israeli Jews for 4 or 5 years. The world's priorities have been so grostequely skewed by the international news media and diplomatic corps that famines affecting millions are treated like intermittent fasting compared to the Palestinian or Rohingya question.

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Juanita Skelton • Feb 13, 2020 at 20:23

Is the obstructionism just the manifestation of the levy? Or, is there more obstructionistic policies being implemented, such as, stealing the aid, or confiscating the 2% levy by theft?

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Bisley • Feb 13, 2020 at 16:23

Whatever humanitarian problems there are in Yemen are primarily due to the civil war -- and the Houthis couldn't prosecute a civil war on any effective scale without the aid they get from Iran. This isn't going to stop until one side destroys the other (unless the regime in Iran is replaced first, and the Houthis are left without the resources to continue). It would probably take a full-scale invasion and occupation to crush the Houthis and drive Iranian influence out of Yemen -- and that's what's needed if Yemen isn't to become an Iranian satellite, and a base for future Iranian aggressions, terrorism, etc.

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Sina • Feb 13, 2020 at 11:54

Saudi Arabia plus America and UK as well as a few other countries are the real reasons behind the humanitarian crisis. Saudi Arabia stated the bombing and continues to do so. Iran used the opportunity to do what it does best: asymmetrical war against Saudi Arabia. Having said that Houthis are not under the Iran's command and act independently. The root cause of Houthis uprising and their fight against their government has nothing to do with Iran. A cursory look at the history of Yemen will clarify all this.

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Franck Prissert • Feb 13, 2020 at 08:50

Con, thank you for the update. The context of Yemen needs to be put in a larger perspective. Pardon the obvious, but Iran is Russia's proxy. Put another way, the Ayatollahs without Putin, or Primakov before him, would not be in charge. So when one thinks Iran, it means Russia. Now, who would want to take over Yemen, and why? It is one of the poorest countries on the planet. Barren, no mineral resources, nothing. Except geopolitically - the Bab el Mandeb Strait, across the Horn of Africa. It controls access to the Arabian Sea to the West of the Arabian Peninsula, much like the Strait of Hormuz to the East. If Iran, meaning Russia, gets hold of it, it will have encircled the Middle East.

Why does the Arabian Sea matter? Because it is the marine access to India, and then China. Putin's bingo, Eurasia. Team Obama let Putin to this stage, effectively trashing the Truman Doctrine, while snubbing KSA, newly elected el-Sisi, and Netanyahu, and "resetting" first with Putin, then with Rouhani. Which is why, as soon as Salman became the new KSA regime, it strengthened ties with Israel and led to what is now MESA, the Middle East Strategic Alliance. So yes, you are absolutely right, Iran is killing Yemenis, with a purpose. KSA and MESA are "simply" preventing Russia from gaining full access to the Arabian Sea. President Trump knows this, so do the Europeans, but they are entrapped in their own dialectic. For more on this, my book "Between Obama's Lines - How We Almost Lost The Middle East, The Cold War, and The Atlantic Alliance."

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